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Interesting. At first I thought, wait a minute, isn't "don't downvote to disagree" in the HN Guidelines? Then I checked, and no, it isn't. The guidelines talk a
by jonnathanson 12y ago
Interesting. At first I thought, wait a minute, isn't "don't downvote to disagree" in the HN Guidelines? Then I checked, and no, it isn't. The guidelines talk about downvoting ("downmodding") very briefly, and only to say that one shouldn't complain when it happens to him or her. There are no guidelines on how or why to downvote.
Maybe this is a problem, in and of itself? Seems different people have different takes on the use case for downvoting.
- tptacek 12y agoThe "HN take on downvoting" comes directly from Paul Graham. People disagree with it, but it is what it is. I don't downvote disagreement, but that's because I'm a compulsive (and, from what I can tell, fast) commenter. The simple way to metabolize this system is just not to get unhappy when you get downvoted.
- jonnathanson 12y agoGotcha. I'll take your word for it, because I regard you as about as much a lay authority on HN posting as HN has. And if pg has weighed in on this topic, well, he's quite the authority, too. :) That being said, I still feel weird about downvoting to disagree. The way I see it, disagreement-downvoting creates noise in its own way. Less noise than unproductive or bad replies, certainly, but more noise than doing nothing. "The simple way to metabolize this system is just not to get unhappy when you get down voted." True, and this is also an official guideline. (A good one, too, IMO).